What tooling is
Tooling is everything a factory makes specifically for your product: injection moulds for plastic parts, dies for metal stamping, printing plates for packaging, jigs that hold parts during assembly. Once made, it lets the factory produce your design again and again.
Because it is made for you alone, tooling is usually paid upfront and separately from the unit price.
What drives the cost
The size and complexity of the part, the number of cavities (how many pieces one cycle produces), the type of steel and the expected lifetime all change the price. A simple single-cavity mould costs far less than a hardened multi-cavity mould built for hundreds of thousands of cycles.
- Part size and how complex its shape is.
- Number of cavities per mould.
- Steel grade and expected number of shots.
- Surface finish, such as polish or texture.
Ownership: write it down
Paying for a mould does not automatically mean you own it in practice. Put it in a simple agreement: who owns the mould, where it is kept, that it may only be used for your orders, and that you can move it to another factory.
Ask the factory to mark the mould with your company name, and photograph it.
Change carefully
Once steel is cut, changing a shape means modifying or remaking the mould. Test the design first with 3D-printed or CNC prototypes, and approve the dimensions before the mould is made. A week spent on prototypes often saves a month of mould changes.
Mould lifetime and maintenance
Moulds wear. A mould built from softer steel may produce tens of thousands of parts; a hardened mould can produce hundreds of thousands. Ask the factory for the expected number of shots and who pays for maintenance and repairs when parts start to show flash or marks.
For long-running products, it is worth investing in a better mould from the start rather than remaking a cheap one twice.
Moving a mould to another factory
Sometimes you need to change factory. If ownership is clearly written down, moving a mould is a logistics task; if it is not, it becomes a negotiation. Keep photos, the mould number and the agreement, and plan the move between production runs.
